Instant Runoff Voting

UPDATE November 2013: The 2013 General Assembly repealed all legislation authorizing instant runoff elections in North Carolina.  As the law now stands, the kinds of instant runoff voting described in the following post are no longer possible in North Carolina.

In 2010, North Carolina became the national leader in instant-runoff voting (IRV).  Our statewide IRV race for a seat on the state’s court of appeals is unprecedented in American electoral history.  An IRV election with more than a million votes cast, like we have had, was previously unknown.  What is IRV and how did we get here? Read more »

More Tax Foreclosure Myths

Building on this earlier post, here are a few more myths about tax foreclosures that deserve debunking.  (This time I promise to avoid bragging on Duke basketball.) 

But first allow me to plug two resources that might be of interest to attorneys and tax officials.  The Nuts and Bolts of N.C. Tax Foreclosures, last week’s well received School of Government webinar featuring an expert panel of experienced practitioners, will shortly be available for on-demand viewing; check the left-side menu on the SOG homepage.   And here is a link to a new Property Tax Bulletin on tax foreclosures. Read more »

Calculating Majorities

Three members of a five-member city council are meeting to discuss city business. Is that a majority? You’d think this would be an easy question, but the answer depends on the context for the question. The basic definition of “majority” is more than half. (The official Robert’s Rules of Order Website has a discussion about reasons to avoid using any other definition for board procedures.) The question is, more than half of what? And for what purposes are we asking the question? This blog post discusses majorities in two specific contexts: 1) When is there a majority for purposes of the statutes that define a quorum? and 2) When is a majority present under the open meetings law for purposes of determining whether a meeting constitutes an official meeting of a public body? Read more »

De Facto Officers Versus Intruders

Last November the voters elected a new town council, and to celebrate the victors invited their local congressman to administer the oath of office.  Several months later some pedant pointed out that North Carolina law doesn’t permit congressmen to administer oaths of office, and so the new board had not legally qualified for office.  The board members quickly took the oath before a proper officer, but townspeople are now asking: What’s the status of each of the actions the board has taken since the organizational meeting?   Read more »

Is Metadata a Public Record? Case Law Update

A city resident forwards an e-mail to Councilwoman Leslie Knope. The e-mail accuses certain other city council members of improper conduct. Councilwoman Knope opens the e-mail on her home computer, which is set up to remotely log in to her public e-mail account. Councilwoman Knope later announces at a public meeting that she has received a copy of the e-mail and that the e-mail purportedly was authored by “Tom Haverford and April Ludgate.” The councilwoman also briefly discusses the contents of the e-mail. April, who is in attendance at the meeting, immediately makes an oral request for the e-mail and denies authoring it. The councilwoman subsequently forwards the e-mail to city staff to produce to April, but in so doing she removes the “to” and “from” lines to protect the identity of the citizen who forwarded the e-mail to the councilwoman. City staff produces a printed copy of the e-mail to April. April is not satisfied with the city’s response to her request, and she further requests that the city produce an electronic copy of the e-mail with all of its associated metadata. The city subsequently provides April with a hardcopy of the entire original e-mail string, including the “to” and “from” e-mail header information that Councilwoman Knope redacted from the originally forwarded e-mail. April still is not satisfied and demands that the city disclose all the metadata associated with the original e-mail. Councilwoman Knope attempts to find the metadata associated with the original e-mail but cannot find it; she concludes that she must have inadvertently destroyed the original e-mail and its associated metadata. The councilwoman, however, requests that the citizen who originally forwarded her the e-mail re-forward it to her. The citizen complies and the city ultimately produces the re-forwarded e-mail (with all of its associated metadata) to April.

Has the city complied with its public records obligation? Read more »

Local Preferences in Public Contracting, Part 3

In my last two posts (here and here), I’ve discussed the efforts of the City Council of Emerald City, North Carolina, to support its local businesses by adopting a local preference policy.  Purchasing Officer Scarecrow has just finished reviewing the Council’s goals for the policy: reducing local unemployment, supporting local businesses, increasing Emerald City’s tax base, and reducing the City’s carbon footprint.  The Council has asked Scarecrow to give them time to consider his comments so they can determine if there are other goals that they would like to achieve through the local preference policy.

Meanwhile, City Attorney Tin Man is about to present his report to the Council on the legal issues presented by a local preference policy.  Tin Man explains that he’ll begin his report by discussing Emerald City’s legal authority to implement a local preference policy.  (This is number two on the list of “questions to consider” that I provided in my first post, but will provide a framework for the discussion of questions 1 and 3.)  Let’s listen in as Attorney Tin Man begins his report: Read more »

Flu Vaccines for Health Care Workers

It’s flu shot season in North Carolina. Flu vaccine clinics are underway in physicians’ offices, health departments, drug stores, some workplaces, and even the North Carolina State Fair. Unlike last year, the vaccine supply appears to be plentiful and is not being restricted to high risk groups. The Centers for Disease Control has recommended flu vaccine for everyone over the age of six months, except for individuals who have a medical contraindication. This year, a single shot (or nasal spray, if you’re healthy and between the ages of 2 and 49) provides protection against H1N1 and two other types of flu that are expected this season.

While flu vaccine is recommended and available for almost everyone this year, there are still certain groups for whom public health officials consider vaccination particularly important. Health care workers (HCWs) constitute one of these groups. For years, public health officials and numerous health care provider professional associations have urged HCWs to take the vaccine, but vaccination rates among HCWs have consistently hovered in the 40% range. Some professional associations and commentators have responded to this low rate by recommending mandatory flu vaccination for HCWs. (See, for example, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recent position statement on this issue.) Although some of the recommendations–and some mandates–have been around for several years, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic brought increased activity around this issue. Unsurprisingly, legal challenges followed.

Read more »